Restart

Ever come back from an extended videogame break – be it vacation, work project, family thing, etc – and just have no interest in anything whatsoever? Or perhaps more paradoxically, have so many conflicting interests that you end up spending your entire free time with procrastinating activities? I have just blown a solid three hours that could have been more productively used progressing through any number of games. Instead, I’m talking to you guys and playing Dungeon Keeper. You know, that almost universally reviled app from the studio that no longer exists?

I’m actually kinda a big deal in that game. The highest ELO bracket is 3200 and I’m 3500+. I don’t actually know where that puts me rank-wise, especially because the designers were dumb and allowed people to farm rank at super-low levels for several months, but at least I’m legit.

I don’t know why either.

In any case, this post was not an elaborate ploy to humble-brag about my Dungeon Keeper prowess. Rather, how do you guys bootstrap yourself out of a post-break gaming slump?

I logged into Planetside 2 for long enough to remember why I hate-love that game (fun gunplay followed by 10+ minutes of camping empty bases) and my Wildstar log-in didn’t last much longer because, hey, Medics still feel terrible. Do you pick a game at random and just plow forward? Do you have an old standby? Or do you just give in to the ennui and take a nap or whatever?

I’ve run across the same problem before and I’ve learned not to force it. If I’m suffering decision paralysis when trying to decide between games, it’s usually because for whatever reason I feel I ‘should’ be playing something, but deep down I don’t actually ‘want’ to. In that case I just eschew video games altogether for a while, and read, watch movies, get a project done around the house, etc. Usually it only takes a couple days and I’m ready to go again.

Yeah, my normal instinct in these situations is to default to some game that lets me shoot people in the face, e.g. some FPS. Partly because it’s almost always fun, and partly because it’s also fairly mindless. By the end of things, I will generally be ready for something more substantial.